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Category Archives: Religion

An interview with sociologist Joan Stavo-Debauge, Swiss National Science Foundation senior researcher at UNIL, on a topical issue: what place do fundamentalist religious views that contest the very notion of secularism have in our secularist societies?

What does Daesh want? Who is fighting who in Syria? Has the conflict reached our shores? Why are terrorists often drug dealers? Bernard Wicht, lecturer in strategic studies at UNIL and expert in 21st-century ‘cell wars’ provides his answers.

The attack on the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo drew Europe’s attention to the war being fought by Muslims in many countries. Here are some keys to understanding this conflict which is as impenetrable as it is bloody and which sees a clash between different conceptions of the Koran and of Islamic tradition.

When one reads the Bible attentively, it becomes apparent that the god Yahweh has not always been alone in the heavens. He sometimes has ministers, armies, and even a wife, as explained by Professor Thomas Römer, who has gone back to the origins of the God of the Bible only to discover a goddess.

The emergence of religion as a matter of personal conviction has made it (almost) a leisure pursuit, one of many which compete for our attention. This state of affairs is revealed by the comprehensive study of religious practice in Switzerland: “Religion in the age of the ego.”

Following their study of religiosity in Switzerland, researchers from the universities of Lausanne and St-Gallen highlighted four profiles. Their book proposes a new typology, distinguishing four types covering all individuals.